As
America�s inherently self-destructive monetary and banking systems
lurch from crisis to crisis�and one foreign country after another
announces its intention to reduce its reliance on Federal Reserve
Notes as a �reserve� currency, and perhaps soon as any currency at
all�I am tempted to say, �I told you so!�

Because
I did. I told everyone so in my book Pieces of Eight in 1983,
and then again, at quite a bit more length, in the second edition
of that book in 2002. In a lighter style, in collaboration with my
friend, Victor �Trader Vic� Sperandeo, I conveyed the same message
in the novel CRA$HMAKER: A Federal Affaire in 2000. Nonetheless,
I do not wish to claim too much credit for this prescience, or just
a good guess based on hindsight gleaned from American legal history�nor
do I offer it as the basis for a �Genius Grant� from the MacArthur
Foundation. After all, the sorry lessons that fiat currency and fractional-reserve
banking teach should be obvious to anyone with an IQ higher than his
age. Moreover, I am but one of many voices that have warned of the
inevitability of these problems.

Now,
inevitability has become imminence. The vultures hatched from the
arrogance, avarice, ambition, and appetite for abusive powers that
have characterized this country�s economic and political �leadership�
for at least the last one hundred years are circling above us, anticipating
their feast upon our famine. In the menacing shadows cast by their
wings, the self-styled �best and brightest� among America�s present
gaggle of �leaders� are being exposed as perhaps the worst and stupidest
ruling class ever known�a true kakistocracy. For only the worst and
stupidest �leaders� of all time could have come to the point of destroying
a country so exceedingly rich in human talents and natural resources.

Although
this exposure is welcome, if somewhat tardy, it is not enough. That
the kakistocracy has made a first-class mess of things is obvious.
That it cannot be relied upon any longer for �leadership� is even
more obvious. That it must be separated from political power is the
most pressing imperative of this day. But exactly what must be done
to correct this situation? And who can do it?

America
needs to take action to replace the Federal Reserve System and its
rotting paper currency before the System�s house of cards finally
collapses on her head. Because, when the roof does fall in, a plethora
of other very nasty events will follow very soon thereafter. Therefore,
before means now.

Even
the Establishment realizes as much, which explains its feverish construction
of a National police state under the guise of providing for �homeland
security�, and its demonization of patriotic dissenters in tirades
of hateful defamation that make Joseph Goebbels appear as a paragon
of moderation, fairness, and accuracy by comparison. The Establishment
knows that its gangrenous monetary and banking regimes cannot be saved,
and must be replaced in the near future. And the Establishment doubtlessly
has a plan and a schedule for using the collapse of the Federal Reserve
System, and the economic chaos it will engender, as the excuse for
introducing a new currency�the Amero�as a conveyor belt to move America
into the supra-national North American Union.

Events,
however, are not proceeding according to the Establishment�s timetable.
The mills of the gods do grind slowly; but they have been grinding
steadily for a long time, and their work is coming to an end. Countervailing
forces are already at work, undermining the Establishment�s position.
The present scheme of fiat currency and fractional-reserve
central banking constitutes a confidence game in both senses of those
words. But if a confidence-man can fool some of the people all of
the time, and all of the people some of the time, he cannot fool enough
of the people for enough of the time once some critical mass finally
wises up. And, as cluttered with noise and disinformation as it is,
the Internet is providing the forum through which to assemble that
critical mass.

So
what is to be done? The solution to the problems the Federal Reserve
System poses is to set up a system of competing currencies: Federal
Reserve Notes and base-metallic Treasury coinage on one side, silver
and gold coin on the other. Actually, America already has all the
necessary elements to put such a system into operation:

First,
Congress is causing a standard silver coin (the �Liberty dollar�)
and a set of gold coins (�American Eagles� of various denominations)
to be minted in amounts sufficient to meet public demand. See 31 U.S.C.
� 5112(e and i).This is not yet constitutional �free coinage�, but
(as the saying goes) it is �close enough for government work� at the
present time.

Second,
these coins are as much legal media of exchange, current money, and
�legal tender� as are Federal Reserve Notes and the Treasury�s base-metallic
coins. See 31 U.S.C. �� 5101, 5103, 5112(h).

Fourth,
any common American may enter into a �gold-clause contract� (payable
exclusively in gold), or a �silver-clause contract� (payable exclusively
in silver) that will be enforceable in the courts. See 31 U.S.C. �
5118(d)(2). Indeed, the only party in the United States that appears
to be barred by statute from making a �gold-clause contract� or a
�silver-clause contract� that is payable in coin and enforceable in
those terms is the General Government. See 31 U.S.C. � 5118(b and
c). But this can be easily corrected.

Now,
more and more people need to be educated and encouraged to use silver
and gold coin as their common media of exchange in �silver-clause�
and �gold-clause� contracts�not necessarily to the immediate exclusion
of Federal Reserve Notes in all transactions, but in those areas and
to the degree that the free market determines is best for society
as a whole.

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This
is the most prudent, if not the only realistic, route for reform,
because no viable plan exists for a direct, �top-down� replacement
of Federal Reserve Notes and base-metallic coinage with a currency
of silver and gold (or any other currency, for that matter). The free
market sets daily prices for various silver and gold coins in Federal
Reserve Notes. But as soon as silver and gold coins became common
media of exchange, in direct competition with Federal Reserve Notes
for that purpose, their values will increase, and the values of Federal
Reserve Notes will decrease, to some unpredictable degrees. The only
way to determine how those relative values should change is to allow
the free market to change them, on a day-to-day and even hour-to-hour
basis, without political interference of any kind. In particular�

Silver and
gold coin must be re-established as currencies entirely separate
from and independent of Federal Reserve Notes.

The free
market must be allowed to set the prices of all goods and services
in silver and gold, as well as in Federal Reserve Notes, simultaneously.

Common Americans
must be allowed to choose and to use whichever currency they desire
for specific transactions.

The
Federal Reserve System must be entirely separated from the General
Government.

Governments
at the National, State, and Local levels must gradually phase out
Federal Reserve Notes as their media of taxation and of payments to
public creditors, and phase in silver and gold coin for those purposes.

The
free market must establish the rates at which silver and gold coins
exchange for Federal Reserve Notes (if anyone who holds silver and
gold remains willing to trade them for any amounts of such notes).

New
banks or other financial institutions dealing in silver and gold accounts,
with their demand-deposits on a basis other than fractional reserves,
should be created. And,

If
the private banks in the Federal Reserve System can find a way to
make Federal Reserve Notes honestly redeemable in silver, or gold,
or both, at whatever rates are economically viable, they should be
encouraged to do so.

In
this way, an economically rational silver-and-gold price structure
will quickly evolve, common people can disconnect their financial
destinies from the Federal Reserve System in a gradual and ordered
fashion, and separation of bank and state will finally be accomplished.
Whether, as the result of this process, all, or some, or only a few
of the banks in the Federal Reserve System can continue in business
is for the free market to decide.

In
principle, a program of competing currencies could be set in motion
from the District of Columbia, if Congress and the White House were
populated with patriots. Such is the scenario employed in CRA$HMAKER.
Describing it in prose is easier than doing it in the halls of Congress,
however. Even if Ron Paul were elected President in 2008, he could
count on vanishingly few co-thinkers in Congress to help him push
through such a reform. (Of course, candidate Paul should campaign
on the ever-optimistic platform that he will propose and fight for
such legislation if elected.)

For
the foreseeable future, the better strategy is to promote competing
currencies in each of the States.

First,
it is perfectly constitutional for the States to use whatever constitutional
currencies they desire for their own fiscal purposes, as the Supreme
Court long ago recognized in Lane County v. Oregon, 74 U.S.
(7 Wallace) 71 (1869). And the two currencies that the Constitution
itself explicitly mandates for the States are silver and gold coin:
�No State shall * * * make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a
Tender in Payment of Debts.� Article I, � 10, cl. 1.

Second,
a �bottom-up� approach can possibly work right now. Some State legislatures
contain patriots who understand the problems the Federal Reserve
System poses. And other State legislators will be compelled by their
desperate and angry constituents to take appropriate remedial action
as the monetary and banking systems go belly-up.

Third,
an approach based on reform in individual States, one by one, is
the most prudent alternative. Any attempt to create competition
between silver and gold coin and Federal Reserve Notes as America�s
media of exchange is an experiment. As such, it should be undertaken
with circumspection, to minimize the risk. Working one State at
a time has two distinct advantages: (i) It does not put all the
eggs of monetary reconstruction into one basket. And (ii) it allows
for refinement of the process, from State to State, as experience
dictates.

If
this is what needs to be done, who is capable of doing it? Ron Paul,
and only Ron Paul. Ron Paul is the only candidate talking
sense�or even talking at all�about this matter. He is the only candidate
with credibility on this subject; for he alone has been warning for
years, explicitly and consistently, about the structural weaknesses
in the monetary and banking systems. The other candidates would not
be even marginally believable if they started talking about the issue.
They have never said anything before, which suggests that they know
nothing about it, and probably care less. And they are part and parcel
of the Establishment that created the problem, and intends to perpetuate
it in some other form, which suggests that they would do nothing effective
to correct it, but likely would exacerbate it. So the choice is as
stark as it is simple: Ron Paul as President, or monetary and banking
crises leading to a National police state. If this Presidential campaign
is made to turn on monetary and banking reform, while the monetary
and banking systems are self-destructing before Americans� very eyes,
only Ron Paul has a chance of winning. Only Ron Paul
will deserve to win. And only if Ron Paul wins can America
be saved.

That
being so, candidate Paul should go through the States explaining the
dangers in the monetary and banking systems, and promoting radical
reform before it is too late. He should tell the voters what must
be done, how it can be done, and why he is the only person who will
do it�and then wait to hear what the Manchurian Candidates opposing
him, in both of the �two� major political parties, will dare to say
in response.

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New
Hampshire, especially, will be an apt venue. Not only because of its
important Presidential primary, but also because, for years now, New
Hampshire�s legislature has had the opportunity to enact, or at least
to study, a bill to begin to bring the State�s finances back to a
silver-and-gold standard. (The latest draft of the bill is posted
at.) To date, however, the legislature there has done nothing positive.
This no doubt reflects the malign influence of party politics and
other forms of stupid, anti-social factionalism, and the irresponsibility
of certain public officials who delight in playing political games
while their State and country are being flushed down History�s toilet.
But the time for petty party politics and silly politicians in New
Hampshire�as well as throughout the rest of America�is over, on the
monetary and banking issue more than any other. This country can afford
no more of that nonsense and those nincompoops. Ron Paul can make
that clear. And, once he does, New Hampshire can become an object
lesson in what common Americans can do at the plate when they finally
know the score.

Edwin Vieira, Jr., holds four degrees from Harvard:
A.B. (Harvard College), A.M. and Ph.D. (Harvard Graduate School of Arts
and Sciences), and J.D. (Harvard Law School).

For more than thirty years he has
practiced law, with emphasis on constitutional issues. In the Supreme
Court of the United States he successfully argued or briefed the cases
leading to the landmark decisions Abood v. Detroit Board of Education,
Chicago Teachers Union v. Hudson, and Communications Workers of America
v. Beck, which established constitutional and statutory limitations on
the uses to which labor unions, in both the private and the public sectors,
may apply fees extracted from nonunion workers as a condition of their
employment.

He has written numerous monographs
and articles in scholarly journals, and lectured throughout the county.
His most recent work on money and banking is the two-volume Pieces
of Eight: The Monetary Powers and Disabilities of the United States
Constitution (2002), the most comprehensive study in existence of American
monetary law and history viewed from a constitutional perspective. www.piecesofeight.us

He is also the co-author (under
a nom de plume) of the political novel CRA$HMAKER:
A Federal Affaire (2000), a not-so-fictional story of an engineered crash
of the Federal Reserve System, and the political upheaval it causes. www.crashmaker.com